MUS 120B Readings by Olivia Pearson

Ramsey (2001)

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 03:53:21 UTC

Week 1

2 Main Goals

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 03:55:06 UTC

". . . black feminists fought against two kinds of invisibility. One involved distinguishing their concerns from those of white feminists. The other entailed exposing and critiquing the masculinist emphasis of black nationalism, even as these women drew energy from it."

Black feminist literature and black nationalism

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 03:56:43 UTC

Fighting stereotypes and self-determining identity

Scholarly Contrasts

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Southern: Focused on recording black musical history as fact

Blues: Linked "black music's development and the historical trajectory of African American social progress" (Baraka) and described inherent masculinity at play (Kiel)

Religious music: Work analyzing black religious music within historical context (Maultsby) and for what it is musically (Boyer). Blend of practical analysis and more abstract thought (Codgell)

"Reconstructionist" moment; music as a social tool

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 04:10:49 UTC

"This musicocultural criticism ultimately seeks to explain what these various styles and gestures mean and how they generate
and achieve their signifying affect."

Kerman (1985)

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 04:13:22 UTC

Week 1

2 Definitions of "Musicology"

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 06:07:03 UTC

history and classification of all music everywhere ever
study of "Western music in high art tradition
Kerman's focus; "somewhere in between"

More Key Definitions

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 06:10:17 UTC

Theory: study of music's structure, highly technical, observable

Ethnomusicology: "music in culture," often refers to non-white music

Theorists go hand in hand with composition, as do musicologists to history

Musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory often overlap

"Musicologists deal with Western art music before around 1900, theorists with the same after 1900, and ethnomusicologists with non-Western musics and Western
music outside the elite tradition — folk and popular music."

Modernism

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 06:13:37 UTC

Pre-WW2 phase and post-WW2 phase
"Modern theory is sometimes not (or not only) descriptive, then, but rather (or also) prescriptive. Much of the
power and prestige of theory derives from its alignment, at least until very recently, with the actual sources of creativity on the contemporary musical scene."

"What I uphold and try to practise is a kind of musicology oriented towards criticism, a kind ofcriticism oriented towards history."

opearson6 — 2025-01-09 06:21:44 UTC

Lecture 1/14

opearson6 — 2025-01-15 18:57:53 UTC

Week 2; Tuesday

Castrato

opearson6 — 2025-01-15 18:58:57 UTC

Male singers castrated before puberty for their voices
Still seen as men. Sex symbols, virtuosic artists, stars of opera

Bonnie Gordon

opearson6 — 2025-01-15 18:59:58 UTC

Body mutilation isn't a thing of the past; dancers, actors, athletes, etc. all willingly mess themselves up physically for the saje of their art

Cyborg Theory

opearson6 — 2025-01-15 19:01:14 UTC

Nothing is totally untouched by man, but nothing is totally human either. Technologized bodies.

Gordon (2011)

opearson6 — 2025-01-18 01:16:45 UTC

Week 2

"Castrati were “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that “unmechanized”bodies could not. "

opearson6 — 2025-01-18 01:18:20 UTC

" Indeed, we ought notto be so smug about our own raised consciousness; we have our own mutilationand traffic in bodies"

opearson6 — 2025-01-18 01:19:25 UTC

The instrument "organ" as synonymous with the human body/a literal organ

opearson6 — 2025-01-18 01:20:14 UTC

Andrews (2020)

opearson6 — 2025-01-21 02:28:26 UTC

Week 3

Geri Allen

opearson6 — 2025-01-21 02:29:22 UTC

Jazz pianist
African American
Composer
Educator
Religious/spiritual upbringing that heavily influenced work
Tied music into historical practices/traditions/events and potential future questions

"For the Healing of the Nations"

opearson6 — 2025-01-21 02:31:59 UTC

"To conclude, Geri Allen’s For the Healing of the Nations is situated in a long line of sacred compositions from Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, John Rutter, Heinrich Schutz, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and countless others who have sought to translate their faith into musical expression. It represents a distillation of many of the conventions and practices that are part of Allen’s musical signature."

"Stones and Streams"

opearson6 — 2025-01-21 02:34:23 UTC

" 'Oh Freedom' serves as the leitmotif throughout the entirety of Stone and Streams. It occurs throughout—either in whole or in part—as an instrumental melody, as a sung text, and as a motivic expression. The piece is perhaps best described as a concertstück or concertino, a work for solo instrument and orchestra, usually in one movement. As such, it is written in free musical form with subsections that vary in character, musical materials, and tempo"

Wong (2008)

opearson6 — 2025-01-28 19:05:19 UTC

Week 4

opearson6 — 2025-01-28 20:12:07 UTC

Taiko player
Ethnomusicologist

Performative Ethnography

opearson6 — 2025-01-28 20:13:17 UTC

Uses her own experience to make cultural connections